“Tell me, Vonulus,” she asked. “Hypothetically speaking, what would happen if I chose not to embrace your god?”
Madren hissed, shocked at the mere suggestion. Vonulus was less easily roused. “You will be the Crown Princess of Karien, your Highness. To worship another god would be considered treason. I imagine Fardohnya treats traitors much the same as we do.”
She patted Madren’s hand comfortingly. “I was simply asking out of curiosity, my Lady. Never fear.”
“Of course, your Highness,” Madren agreed. “I knew that.”
“And will you be joining us for lunch, Vonulus? It is a pleasure to hear my native tongue spoken so fluently.”
“I would be honoured, your Highness.”
“Perhaps you would be more comfortable dressed in something more... appropriate?” Madren suggested, waving the silent ladies-in-waiting to her. “I shall have your ladies escort you to the chamber put aside for you.”
Hoping that the chamber would be warmer than the draughty, cavernous hall, Adrina acquiesced graciously to the suggestion. Surrounded by the Ladies Grace, Hope, Pacifica and Chastity, she walked the length of the hall to the entrance where, not surprisingly, the five-pointed star and lightning bolt was carved into the large wooden doors. They opened as she approached to reveal Cratyn and a young knight entering the hall. The men stopped as they neared them. Cratyn’s eyes flickered over Adrina then fixed on the Lady Chastity, who walked on her right. The look he gave the young woman was filled with remorse. Adrina glanced at Chastity, startled to see her soft brown eyes misted with unshed tears and unmistakable longing.
“Prince Cretin, I thought you were lost,” she said brightly. Was the pale and insipid Chastity the reason Cratyn was so unhappy about being forced to take a Fardohnyan bride?
“It’s Cratyn, your Highness,” Lady Pacifica corrected her, rather crossly.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” Adrina asked innocently. “Cretin.” It was an unfortunate, if rather delightful, result of her accent, that she mispronounced his name. It was also quite deliberate. Adrina spoke Karien fluently. Much more fluently than her somewhat contrived accent led her hosts to believe. Her first court’esa had been a linguist of some note and he had taught Adrina to speak a number of languages fluently. Another thing better kept from the Kariens. She had not thought of the court’esa in years – a slender, gentle young man with dark eyes and long, graceful limbs.
“It’s nothing to worry about, my Lady,” Cratyn assured Pacifica, not wishing to make an issue of it. “Your Highness, this is my cousin, Drendyn, Earl of Tiler’s Pass. Drendyn, this is Her Serene Highness, Princess Adrina of Fardohnya.”
The young Earl bowed inelegantly, smiling like a child confronted with a new and exotic toy. Adrina took an instant liking to him. He was the first Karien she had met who did not feel the need to mope about as if they were perpetually in mourning.
“Welcome to Karien!” he gushed. “I do hope you’ll be happy here. After the wedding, you should come to Tiler’s Pass. We have the best wines in Karien and the hunting is just marvellous. You do hunt, don’t you?”
“Every chance I can get. I shall look forward to your hospitality, my Lord.”
“This way, your Highness,” Pacifica interrupted stiffly, with a frown at the Earl. She did not seem to like the idea of Adrina getting too friendly with him.
“If you will excuse me, my Lord, Prince Cretin.” She curtsied gracefully and followed her ladies-in-waiting into the hall.
As the door closed behind them she stopped and called the women to her. They all turned to face her expectantly. Pacifica was tall and plain, with protruding pale eyes and pockmarked skin. Hope was a pleasant looking girl with rich brown hair and a vacant expression. Grace was a plump brunette with a button nose and a receding chin. Chastity was pale and fair and by far the beauty of the group. “Ladies, I’d like to make sure we understand each other.”
“Your Highness?” Pacifica asked, still a little put out, she thought, by Drendyn’s enthusiastic welcome.
“As my ladies-in-waiting, your actions reflect on me. If I ever see you, Pacifica, acting like a jealous fishwife again, or you Chastity, lusting after my fiancé, I shall have you both whipped. Is that clear?”
Pacifica turned a brilliant shade of red. Chastity burst into tears. Grace and Hope simply stood there, dumbstruck. Adrina marched on ahead, not waiting for them to catch up. That way, they couldn’t see her laughing.
Chapter 12
The Harshini were the strangest creatures R’shiel had ever encountered. All she had been taught to believe about them, since her earliest childhood, was proving to be wrong. They were not evil or wicked or even particularly threatening. They were a gentle, happy people who seemed to want nothing more than the same happiness for all living things.
For R’shiel, raised in an atmosphere of political intrigue and ambition, she found it hard to believe that the Harshini could be so innocent. She questioned them constantly, looking for the crack in their serene complacency, but found none. In fact, she suspected there were even some of the Harshini who deliberately avoided her, for fear of being asked questions they simply didn’t understand. They had no ambition beyond that which the gods had created them for. They were the guardians of the gods’ power. That was all they needed to know.
The demons were a different matter, however, and R’shiel found herself enjoying their company much more than the placid Harshini. Lord Dranymire was a bit of a bore, but she supposed that came from being older than time itself. The other demons, the younger ones, were much more interesting.
Korandellan had tried to explain the bond between the Harshini and the demons in some depth, but R’shiel understood so little about the gods that she had trouble grasping the concept. She could feel the bond, though, like an invisible cord that tied her to the demons. She only needed to think of them, and they were there, eager to show her Sanctuary, or have her tell them something of the outside world. Their hunger for new things was insatiable, particularly in the younger demons, although “young” was a relative term among the demonkind. “Young”, when compared to Lord Dranymire, the prime demon in the brethren bonded to the té Ortyn family, might be anything less than a thousand years.
“We are all one,” Korandellan explained patiently. “The gods, the Harshini and the demons. We are all made of the same stuff.”
“Then why aren’t the Harshini gods?” she asked.
“We are a part of the gods.”
“And the demons?”
“They are also a part of the gods.”
“So gods created the Harshini and the demons, right?”
“That is correct.”
“Why?”
“Because they feared that without some way of limiting their power, they would destroy each other.”
“So the gods gave you their power? That’s a pretty dumb thing to do. What happens if they want to use it?”
Korandellan sighed. “They did not give us their power, R’shiel, they share it. The power you feel is the same source of power that the gods draw on.”
“Then that makes you gods, too, doesn’t it?”
“Think of it as a rope made up of many strands,” the King said, trying to put his explanation into words she could grasp. “Each of the Primal gods has divinity over a different aspect of life. Each god draws on their own strand. Depending on what is happening in the world, the strands grow thicker and stronger, or weaker and thinner.”